Title of recording: Oral History Interview with Nancy Holt, Octber 27,
1985. Interview K-0010. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)

Title of series: Series K. Southern Communities. Southern Oral History
Program Collection (K-0010)

Author: Frances E. Webb

Title of transcript: Oral History Interview with Nancy Holt, October 27,
1985. Interview K-0010. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)

Title of series: Series K. Southern Communities. Southern Oral History
Program Collection (K-0010)

Author: Nancy Holt

Description: 286 Mb

Description: 37 p.

Note:
Interview conducted on October 27, 1985, by Frances E.
Webb; recorded in Unknown.

Note:
Transcribed by Unknown.

Note:
Forms part of: Southern Oral History Program Collection
(#4007): Series K. Southern Communities, Manuscripts Department,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Note:
Original transcript on deposit at the Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.

Editorial practicesAn audio file with the interview complements this electronic edition.The text has been entered using double-keying and verified against the original.The text has been encoded using the recommendations for Level 4 of the TEI in
Libraries Guidelines.Original grammar and spelling have been preserved. All quotation marks, em dashes and ampersand have been transcribed as entity
references.All double right and left quotation marks are encoded as "All em dashes are encoded as —

[TAPE 1, SIDE A]

Page 1

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]

FRANCES E. WEBB:

I think I'd like to start out talking about maybe your childhood and
growing up in this area and things like how many, how much of your
family lived here and what kind of relationship you had with other
people in the neighborhood and that sort of thing.

NANCY HOLT:

There was twelve children in our family and, we, because there were no
other children in this area and because of the isolation that most
people maintained then except on Saturdays and Sundays and in times of
need. The unique thing about this community I think is that you -
there's not alot of exchange and visiting on a regular basis, but if
there is a definite need, you can be sure that the neighbors will come
in to help whether it is raising a barn or helping at the time of death
or illness. But as children, our first real social contact other than
church was at school. And we had, of course living on a, a small farm
having that many children, your summers were pretty well taken up with
preserving food and doing all sorts of things that were necessary to get
back to the point that you were ready for another winter. And it truly
was a seasonal kind of life. Our closest neighbors, of course, was the
Armstrongs and I can remember as a child going down there and hearing
the guinea hens way before you could get there. And Miss Dinah, Coy
Armstrong's mother, was an elegant lady with of lots of white hair all
piled up on her head and if she would let down her hair it would come to
the back of her heels - beautiful, beautiful woman. And then the
Bradshaws and the Apples around here. We all knew each other. It

Page 2

was certainly a cordial relationship, but primarily
all visiting was family oriented. The families got together every Sunday
for Sunday dinner. Everybody came back home. And I think that was true
for other families too.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

You went to your grandparent's house?

NANCY HOLT:

No, they all came here. Our grandparents, my husb… - my dad's - family
and my mom's both were mountain people. Dad was Cherokee and something
and mother was, my mother was Scotch and Irish. And they lived on a
little - an original land grant - in, around Valdese. So we came here
shortly before I was born so I've, I've lived here all my life. [Phone ringing] Anyway, I
remember it as being a pleasant time. All these were dirt roads around
here, and people walked a lot. In fact, we very seldom ever had a car.
And if you wanted to go somewhere in the near neighborhood you did. And
you did so by walking. But we were pretty isolated here. You would go to
town.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

What, which town did you usually go to?

NANCY HOLT:

We generally went to either Mebane or to Burlington, or Graham - never
went to Burlington, that was a big city time. And I generally never went
to town except once right before school started.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

To get your school clothes?

NANCY HOLT:

Uh-huh. No, to get your school shoes. Shoes was the only thing we didn't
have. All the other clothes were made.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

Where did you buy the cloth?

NANCY HOLT:

They were feed sacks. And feed sacks used to be beautiful. Absolutely.
You would have stripes, flowers, you know all sorts of stuff. You would

Page 3

have something to make masculine-type clothes
out of and then the pretty prints and flowers and things like that for
the, the girls. So the feed sacks really controlled the fashion of the
day. [Laughter] Of course, we didn't make
overalls or pants or anything like that. But for the girls, and there
was seven girls and three boys, one child died as a baby, everything was
generally taken care of at home. I can remember Mama complaining when
coffee went up to thirty-nine cents a pound. She said "What's the world
coming to?" And, I don't think our - as well as I can remember the most
that was ever spent on groceries was like twenty-five dollars.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

So you just raised everything.

NANCY HOLT:

Yeah. We didn't eat a whole lot of meat. The only meat we had was pork,
and, maybe some chicken. But you didn't eat a whole lot of your chickens
unless they had already got old enough to stop laying eggs and then you
had chicken pie. So it, it was very elemental. And I think we had a
direct cause and effect in our life. You do this so this will happen or
so, so these things will be taken care. And I think it was an excellent
way to perceive life. It gave you a direct responsibility for what
happened.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

You knew if you didn't …

NANCY HOLT:

If you did not prepare enough canned vegtables or whatever, then you
wouldn't have enough to eat. It was, it was just that basic. And I
remember my father, although he had one leg and he had a wooden leg, he
would go hunting. And I loved rabbit and squirrel stew and we ate all
that stuff. He couldn't bring himself to shoot birds, so we never had

Page 4

any dove or anything like that. He did shoot one
wild turkey. And I was very disappointed in that turkey as a child. I
expected it to be something just absolutely wonderful like the Pilgrims
had. But in fact it was all dark meat and it was like duck - very
disappointing. But we had rabbit and squirrel. And ham or fat back or
something like that for breakfast. There was no such thing as any of the
- we did not eat beef. If we happened to have a cow, the cow was used
for milk.

And I remember lots of the activities and a lot of the news, anything
that went on, was exchanged at church on Sunday. And we went to Cane
Creek Church over here. And it was, it was more a social experience than
a religious experience. In fact the first time I got kissed it was at
church, I mean, where else did I see people? And I think I was about
nine, which was wonderful and it sent me in ecstasy for years, I think,
just thinking about it. [Laughter]

FRANCES E. WEBB:

What kinds of other social things did they have at the church?

NANCY HOLT:

You would have an ice cream supper, occasionally. Always a Christmas
pageant. And of course the other religious holidays, the Easter types of
things. Bible school during the summer, maybe a fall festival. It, there
was - there were something generally year around. If there was somebody
in the neighborhood having a, a bad time we would give 'em a
pounding.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

I don't know what that is.

NANCY HOLT:

A pounding is - I don't know where it comes from - but it's, it's like
you sharing a pound of flour, a pound of cornmeal, a pound of sugar.
Everybody contributing some kind of staple or, and foodstuff. So it -

Page 5

that was generally carried out through the
church too.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

So the church sort of was an outlet for people to help other people?

NANCY HOLT:

Um-uhm, um-uhm. And it was, I think it was acceptable through the church.
Whereas it may not have been totally acceptable if the neighbors got
together and went to help poor old so-and-so that was having problems,
because there was a lot of pride here. And I think one of the reasons
that there was not a lot of social contact between families is to
preserve this kind of innate dignity and privacy, that you still see in
some of the families here that - now they may be the biggest brawlers in
the world, but they close ranks if, if something has been, somebody has
been threatened, and you know, the family as a whole feels threatened.
They most definitely will close ranks. So, I think it was probably like
a lot of the other very, very rural areas. And the thing that I think is
unique is being so close to Chapel Hill. And Chapel Hill was always
viewed with a jaundiced eye out here because it had those strange people
that weren't from here, did not have generally the same values,
generally did not understand.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

What values, how do you think the values differed?

NANCY HOLT:

Well, first of all they live all clustered up together. That was one. And
you never knew - and I think it even goes back to that basic thing I was
talking about, the cause and effect. A real tie with the land and a real
tie with what we considered the, the way to live. And I think perhaps
they held the same view of other people in the surrounding areas. But I
think perhaps Chapel Hill most of all because it was like a transient
thing. How could these people establish values when they're

Page 6

only here for a short time and then they go away and another
set comes in with another set of values? And I think it had some
validity. One of the things I think that was a definite prejudice on
their part was they did not stop to consider that Chapel Hill was a town
with long term residents. That did not keep the people from this
community from taking produce down there and selling it, at the Farmers'
Market. But it was probably the, the lack of understanding was probably
the lack of knowledge, more than anything else. I'm trying, I'm trying
to think back to what it was like then as opposed to now. I don't think
anybody pays any attention to it. Chapel Hill is just another place to
shop or to go or to receive goods and services. And because - and I
think it was an acceptance of Chapel Hill as being a contiguous part of
the, the community and being that place that you could receive goods and
services. Until the OWASA [Orange Water and Sewer Authority] thing
happened. And then it was almost like it reverted back twenty years ago.
And it was like them and us. And I think perhaps the way it was handled,
the lack of concern for the people here, the lack of acknowledging the
values of this community. I think the perception was that they saw this
area and they thought well, there's not a whole lot of folks out there,
so, and there is a lot of land with not a development on it. So who
cares? Let's, let's put a lake out here for a temporary water supply.
And then in twenty years we'll go away. And then they proceeded to make
these things happen without considering the value of a community that
had been going on for almost two hundred years with lots of the same
families being in the area. And it acted

Page 7

like glue.
When, you know I told you that families would close rank, I think the
community closed rank. And that included the recent arrivals. And Bruce
and I have discussed on various occasions how grand it was, what a great
effect, even though OWASA, and I think it centered on OWASA as opposed
to Chapel Hill first of all, because of Everett Billingsley and his
attitude and his arrogance toward the people out here. You could see
doctors and lawyers and farmers and, and milking hands all pulling
together. The - I guess the greatest net effect was that the newcomers
suddenly became part of this big family called a community.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

And they really weren't before?

NANCY HOLT:

Well, they were on a one-on-one basis. Probably a little, a little group
here that if you, if one of the newcomers came in, they were friendly
with everybody there, but the whole neighborhood as a whole did not even
know these people. So it had the net effect of making it a very, very
cohesive group of very diverse people that ordinarily would not had a
thing in common. And, I would say that it's probably the greatest thing
that's happened to this community in a hundred years. The positive
effect of everybody pulling together and getting to know your neighbors
that lived way on the other side of Cane Creek when you wouldn't have
had - ordinarily have had - a chance nor any community event that would
draw all these people. Because the church in the last twenty years has
stopped being the center, of any activity. Only those people that goes
to this church have these activities. It - very seldom do the churches
throw open their doors and have a community wide

Page 8

anything. Oak Grove Church right over here will have you know, fund
raising events. But it's not - I guess it's concentrated in this area.
Cane Creek would do this. Bethlehem would do this. But this bypassed all
religious, social, cultural lines. And it [mobilized] people in ways
that I just find phenomenal. So we can thank OWASA for that, that we are
all now friendly with, with, everybody around in the community. And I
guess the people felt threatened and so they moved.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

Why do you think the new people were as concerned about the lake as the
old people were?

NANCY HOLT:

Because, they came here for a reason. And that reason most generally was
not to be part of another housing development. They have probably made a
big, lifetime investment and they had planned to stay. And the community
was attractive to them as it was or they wouldn't have been here. And so
all of a sudden the rules were changing - everything is going to be
different? And I think I probably would have been [mobilized] just as
much had I been a newcomer as I was being a lifelong resident. Good,
it's a good, feeling community. I went away when Bruce and I were first
married and prior to getting married, I lived other places. And it
didn't have the same feel. And I had always considered it because this
was home. That's why I had this feeling. Now my husband will even admit
that this is a good area; it feels good. The, there's a certain
something here, an acceptance, that perhaps in where he came from in
southern Alamance county there was not. That it took fifty years for
somebody to be accepted. You know, they were viewed as outlanders and,
and people that were just upstarts in the

Page 9

community.
And it perhaps took two generations for somebody to be accepted as a
member of the community. It was never that way here. There was, unless
the people were really, really active in the churches, the newcomers,
they never went beyond their next neighbor which may have been a half a
mile away or, or people that they had bought the land from. So they
still maintained ties with whatever the outside world may have been.
Until the community was threatened.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

So, about anybody that moved here, if they were friendly and joined the
church, could make friends and be accepted.

NANCY HOLT:

Um-uhm, um-uhm. That was, that was never a problem. But you see we never
had an influx of these people here because the only people that
generally came into the community married into it. And so sons and
daughters got some of the family land and they built on it. And then
their children. And so that's the way - it was like a community
population.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

So you - the friends, when you came back after you were married, the
friends you made were the friends you had had before?

NANCY HOLT:

Um-uhm. There had been some shifting of, of who was here and who was gone
and there had been the - one of the greatest tragedies, we felt, shortly
before we came back, was that the Perrys had lost their dairy farm; they
had gone bankrupt. And all of this land through here, all the way over
to the corner of the Oak Grove Church Road, parts of it and parcels of
that was the Perrys'. And they were like the cornerstone here and all of
a sudden, you know, they couldn't make it as a dairy farm any longer.
And their children moved away, except for Joe and

Page 10

Marie. So I think that perhaps made people nervous. You know, because
this was a dairy farming community. And when one of 'em, you know, one
of the - what we thought was the most prosperous and the most stable
goes bankrupt? It makes you wonder. But there was no new dairy farm
started. No new farm started. A dentist bought the Perry farm and
nothing changed a whole lot. He did not move to the community. But, he
hired the young men in the community to work the farm and he had beef
cattle instead of dairy cattle. So, you know, the transition there
wasn't too, wasn't too great.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

Your family, they didn't have a dairy farm?

NANCY HOLT:

Uh-unh, uh-unh.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

What kinds of things did they do?

NANCY HOLT:

My father was - for a while ran a sawmill. And, then he worked after he
sold the sawmill back in, at the end of the war [World War II], worked
for Kearny Rogers who was another member of the community. So, …

FRANCES E. WEBB:

So, your farm was …

NANCY HOLT:

Well, it was, it was small. It was just enough to sustain a family of
twelve. [Laughter] No, we did not grow
produce and things like that for sale. So we were, we were not the
landed gentry. [Laughter]

FRANCES E. WEBB:

Is there sort of a class scheme around here, do you sort of think there's
a …

NANCY HOLT:

No, I think there's a behavior scheme. I don't think class has anything
to do with it. I think it's, your social acceptability, is based on your
behavior. If you go out and get drunk on Saturday night and raise hell,
then you're not as acceptable as if you went to the ice cream

Page 11

supper. [Laughter]
And there have been members of my family, other family people in the
community that - they were tolerated. But not socially acceptable. And I
did not feel, being at the bottom of the socio-economic scale, I really
did not feel a great class difference.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

You were as acceptable as somebody with more money if …

NANCY HOLT:

I think so, because I was smart. You know, and, and if you - they
appreciated people that had smarts. Now, I don't know whether somebody
that did not get the DAR award and stuff like that, how acceptable they
would be. One of the greatest influences in my life was [Margaret]
Stanford, the first grade teacher. And she made me competitive. And
[Laughter] she would say things like
"Now you really don't want Mary Jo to get ahead of you, do you? Now you
need to read three books because Mary Jo's read two." And she'd do the
same thing to Mary Jo. So she, she truly made me competitive and it was
not so much competitive with somebody else but competing with myself to
see how far I could go. Another great influence was White Cross School.
That's where everybody went to school. Four classrooms, a big central
auditorium in the middle and you'd have lots of community affairs there.
You know, but they were all school-related like fall festivals,
Christmas pageants and, ball games in the summer time, a big picnic in
the spring. I thought it was a wonderful place.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

What grades were there?

NANCY HOLT:

The first through the eighth. First and second in one room, third and
fourth in the next, and. The great thing about it was that if you were
sharp, you didn't have to go anywhere you'd just go sit in with the

Page 12

second graders. And sometimes you could go sit in
with the third and fourth graders. And that's what Mary Jo Morrow and I
did, used to do. And we were great friends. I'm surprised at our, we
were such great friends with people making us competitive. But we, we
had a real good friendship and, and we were allowed to - because we both
liked to read and I think reading was Margaret Stanford's greatest
thrust in the community. She kept telling you, if you, if you read
you'll never be lonely. And she was single, and I thought that was, in
later thinking about it that was, that was pretty poignant. If you read
you'll never be lonely. It was, it was a good life and I think when
Bruce and I married and came back here I wanted that for Mike and Brian.
I wanted them to feel a sense of community, a sense of continuity. I
didn't want them to ever get to the place that they valued transient
types of things. The - I didn't want 'em to feel that this was an
anonymous world. That if you had a sense of self and a sense of
community then already you've got stability. And if you have stability,
you have a, less chance of things going awry in your life. And I guess
perhaps it's discipline. And if you are anonymous, there's no social
controls. And I wanted to give them those same values. Now we left the
community where Bruce's parents were because - you know, the Holts
started the community, it was an original land grant. Bruce was still an
upstart. And there was no sense of self and community up there. And we
felt like this would be the place to, to raise our kids. And there was
this …

[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]

[TAPE 1, SIDE B]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]

NANCY HOLT:

… Brian had any problems with acceptance. It was just like you picked up
your threads again, and kept on moving. And I think the greatest fear in
the community is these threads will be broken. I also realized with some
great horror that we're getting to be the older generation, for God's
sakes. I'm still a baby. And I realized that the people that I had
always felt were the elders of the community are dying and we're the
next in line. And where in the hell are we going to get the wisdom, that
I always felt these people had? You know, we're just struggling too. And
I thought, well maybe wisdom and, and perception are two completely
separate things. Maybe you don't have to be wise, just everybody think
you're wise. [Laughter] So it's, it's been
a good life; it's been interesting.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

I thought maybe you would tell me a little bit about how you and Bruce
met and, and your work and moving back here?

NANCY HOLT:

Because there was so many people in the family we learned early that if
you wanted anything other than the, the shelter, food and clothing, you
had to go get it yourself. So I started to work when I was fourteen. And
during high school I drove the school bus and I worked at Colonial
Store, which was a grocery store, and went to school. And then after I
graduated I was making plans to go to college and I'd saved up all my
money, so I would have enough for the first year at Elon. And, the store
closed, and one of the members from Byrd's Food Center came to Colonial
Store and wanted my sister and myself to come to work for them. She
choose not to and I needed the money. I was eighteen at that

Page 14

time, just graduated from high school, and I
needed the money to get in school. So I went to work for Byrd's and I
met Bruce then. Well, during the summer, my brother had had an auto
accident and I was the only one with money. And he had no insurance and
so I had to take the money - I didn't have to, I just felt compelled and
I couldn't stand to see my mother worry about what he would do. So we
used my college money. And, it just kind of took the winds out of my
sails for a while. And, it was like the worst tragedy in this whole
world that I had lost my dream and I had, I had gone so far in making
sure that I had just enough money to pay my tuition, my books -
everything. And I would live at home and go to school. And, then I
thought, well, I'll do something different but I can't do anything
different without money. So I continued to work. I met Bruce that
summer. And, he used to come and stand and look at me. And so I told
somebody that knew him, I said, tell him to stop looking at me, if he
wants a date have him to ask me, otherwise stop looking at me, cause he
was making me nervous. So he asked me for a date and I immediately fell
in love, head over heels in love with him because he kissed my hand and
nobody had ever kissed my hand before. On, at the end of the first date
- we just talked and talked and talked and talked and talked - and he
kissed my hand while I was walking up the steps. And I was lost from
that point on it was it. And besides he was, he was very intelligent and
he had a different world, and I thought, well maybe I ought to change
worlds. And so we dated for a couple of years and I continued to work.
And I became active in working with the kids in the Elon Orphanage on a
volunteer basis. Wanted to bring 'em all

Page 15

home.
Bruce and I got married a couple of years later. Mike and Brian were
born. Mike was born and a couple of years later Brian. And at that time
we were living on Bass's Mountain, which is his folks' land. That is now
his. And, there was just not the right sense of community. Even though
three-fourths of the people in the neighborhood were his relatives,
distant or close, or whatever, there was no sense of community; there
was no sense of, of togetherness. And if you had problems, you had your
problems all by yourself. And their reserve was such that they didn't,
unless they were invited, they never dared cross that line. Now who in
the time of trouble is going to think of saying, holloring at their
neighbor, saying I need your help? To me, it ought to be obvious that
somebody is having troubles and they need your help. And it just wasn't
right for raising Mike and Brian - just was not right. And this house
had - the Perry's kids had built this house maybe fifteen years before
and there had been a series of people in and out, some of them newlyweds
in the community that would live here for a short time before they built
their own home or move somewhere else. And this was for sale and it was
right in the community and Bruce and I came and looked at it. And we
decided this is where we wanted to be. And Bruce has always loved Chapel
Hill. And at that time he was working at the University [of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill], and come to think of it, so was I. And it just
seemed to be a perfect move and I wanted Mike and Brian to go to the
schools here as opposed to Alamance county.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

Did they still have the White Cross school?

NANCY HOLT:

No, White Cross had closed, so they went to Hillsborough, went to

Page 16

Cameron Park and all the schools there. But, Mike
and Brian were part of a group of boys. It seemed like there was maybe
two girls in the whole neighborhood their age group. The rest of them
were boys. Right? [Nancy addresses Brian, who nods yes.] Every kid was a
boy. So it was just like - you know, they just fit in perfectly and no
problems at all.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

Well, so what do you - the community still have sort of community feeling
when you moved back that you had when you were a child?

NANCY HOLT:

Um-hum, um-hum. See nothing had changed. There may have been more family
members living here. And one or two people had moved in from the
outside, but essentially the community had remained unchanged. There
were still family farms, the big family farms, you knew who was here,
you had no problem knowing the values of the community because they
hadn't changed. You may have had a new preacher or two, people had
gotten older, some of the elderly folks had died off. Nothing had
changed; it was still the same community. No, it was still the same.
Nothing had changed. There's - and that may have been all in my head,
because I was coming back home. But I didn't sense it; I didn't, I
didn't feel any change. And it wasn't as if I had to re-acclimate myself
to the community. I was just here. And I had brought my family back.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

You sort of still shopped in the same places and …

NANCY HOLT:

Um-hum, um-hum. But you see, I never had that feeling about Chapel Hill;
I was always fascinated by it. And I loved to walk the streets of Chapel
Hill in the fall, and it was, it was just a vitality there that

Page 17

I really appreciated. And up until about ten,
maybe fifteen years ago, Chapel Hill was still - had not changed a whole
lot, since the time I went to school down there. It had not changed.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

So did you ever, you did get to go to college down there?

NANCY HOLT:

Well, off and on. Between kids and [Laughter]
all sorts of things, I guess I, I've studied nursing, I studied
accounting, I studied psychology and, just, whatever interested me. And
between family and working and kids, whatever I could plug in at any
given time. And that's probably more suitable to me then having to
follow that much structure because I had to use whatever time was
available. And I was curious.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

I think that's the best reason for going to school. You have two
businesses now. Health Office Support.

NANCY HOLT:

Office Support Systems. We changed the name in '83 so we can take care of
commercial clients as opposed to all medical. And the Cactus Medical
Group, which is the software development company. And the other one is
management consultant company. And we have been doing that for ten
years.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

We?

NANCY HOLT:

Three other ladies from the community. Well, two of the other ones from
right across Haw River. That's, they're still part of - Eli Whitney is
an extended part of this community because we never felt any separation.
Eli Whitney, because the feed mill over there, and the vet was there
and, and that's a real strong recreational center. There was really no
difference. I never felt any crossing of lines, community

Page 18

lines, with Eli Whitney. It was just all like an extension.
So two of them came from that community.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

I sort of heard that there's sort of three different areas - isn't there
something called Teer and Oaks and Orange Grove? Doesn't, doesn't that
make up Cane Creek?

NANCY HOLT:

Yeah.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

But you, you sort of see the whole area as one community…

NANCY HOLT:

Yeah, yeah. Never, never has - you see, we didn't even know that these
things were called Oaks, Teer and Cane Creek until somebody from the
outside told us. It's like when I went to school I came home one day and
I said "Mama, what's poor?" She said "Why?" I said "Somebody told me I
was poor today." And it's like having to go to school to find out you
weren't rich, cause we'd never given it any thought. And until somebody
from the outside came in and told us we were three separate communities,
hell, we didn't know it. [Laughter]

FRANCES E. WEBB:

I guess you sort of felt like four [communities in one] then?

NANCY HOLT:

Yeah. I don't - there was no great separation at all, it just was. It was
home. The only separation that I could see was in the city limits, where
those people lived right next to each other, all scrunched up together,
which we thought was strange. Cause you need more space then that. But
no, there was never - the only lines that you could ever say was the
church boundaries. But it really had nothing to do with I am from Teer
or I am from Oaks. We didn't even know we were Teer and Oaks. Just
really did not. And Cane Creek. Because it was church centered. You had
Bethlehem, which was a Presbyterian church; you had Oak Grove

Page 19

which was Baptist; you had Cane Creek that was
Baptist; Antioch that was Baptist. And they were the four primary
churches. But they were predominately Baptist. Now, on the outside,
around - there was Orange Chapel Methodist. But that was, that was a
little further out of the, the very core of the community I would think.
So it was very, very Southern, very Baptist. And very family
oriented.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

You said the church was more a social place, but when they did talk about
religion what kinds of things …

NANCY HOLT:

I don't think anybody bothered talking about religion. It just was. It
was one of those givens. And I think it was such an integral part that
was woven into your lives, that it had no special significance because
you either - it permeated everything you did, or you didn't go. And it
was just like eating, sleeping - Sunday you went to church. Just that
simple. And I don't think anybody ever bothered talking about religion,
maybe it was a personal thing, I don't know. I can remember asking some
embarrassing questions when I was around sixteen. But that - I thought I
knew all the answers then, which, which was asinine. [Laughter] The older I get, the real - the
more I realize I don't know doodley-squat.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

What kinds of questions?

NANCY HOLT:

First of all, the conflict between the Old and the New Testament. I
couldn't resolve that. On the one hand it's an eye for an eye and on the
other hand it was love everybody. And I thought, now that's silly. I
can't love everybody. I'd be a hypocrite. And so these - and I guess it
was, I was trying to form my own philosophy and my own personal
feelings; and they just kind of went - and, and looked at me, "Why are

Page 20

you asking these questions?" [Laughter]

FRANCES E. WEBB:

Maybe they didn't want to deal with them.

NANCY HOLT:

Well, they had probably heard it before; I don't think I was that unique,
in asking those question. I'm sure young people have asked these
questions millions of times before. But I was real perplexed, because I
couldn't - all of a sudden I'd run up against something that had no
answer. And I think - they said you had to believe. And I thought I
don't know what to believe. And so, as most teenagers do, I went through
a period where I decided religion had no value. You know, it just - well
if they can't answer my questions, pppt with it. And then, like Mark
Twain says at sixteen his father - when he was sixteen his father was
rather dumb and didn't know anything and when he was eighteen he was
amazed at how much the old man had learned, in such a short time. Well
I'm kind of that way too. You know, just the arrogance of youth
sometimes blows my mind and I see it in my own children and, and this
being the, almost like the teen center of the community, for the young
boys.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

Your house?

NANCY HOLT:

Yes. I never know from one day to the next how many kids will be here,
how many will be sleeping here. Which is fine with me. I'd rather they
know that they have somewhere to go. They can come here on Friday night
and fix pizzas and sit down and have rap sessions and do all of the
things, that are acceptable to the household rules here, which is no
alcohol, you know. It's, it's a haven. I've had kids to stay three
months. The - when Mike graduated I had three kids to ask me if they

Page 21

could come and live here since Michael was going
away to school. [Laughter] So, very
strange, but neat.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

Mama, my mother always adopted two or three too.

NANCY HOLT:

Yeah. I've, I've probably fed - when Bruce was working at UNC before he
retired, he used to bring home students. They would be students that had
a special project or, or that he had met and he always picked up
hitchhikers and he would bring people home. And I never knew any night
how many, people would be here for dinner. It depended on how many
people standing along the side of the road wanted a lift home. [Brian answers the telephone.] Sometimes
students moved out here to stay in the community. And somehow or the
other Bruce always found them and brought them up here to eat. So I was,
I was mom to a lot of students. And we've kept in touch over the years;
some of 'em go back ten years and I still get cards from 'em where - and
they'll write letters every now and then telling me what's going on and,
how life has been for them or, if they come by they'll stop. It's
neat.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

Well, you've talked a little bit about the Reservoir. I was sort of
saving that controversial thing for towards the end. Did you ever get
involved in the Cane Creek Conservation Authority?

NANCY HOLT:

From the first. I was the lady that made all the biscuits, that put all
the ham in it for seven, I guess, seven years. Bruce and I were very,
very actively involved in everything that went on.
[Brian hands Nancy a telephone message.] Thank you. In fact,
over our thirteen or fourteen years of marriage, prior to this Cane
Creek thing - I guess it must have been fourteen years of marriage - I
had fallen in love with

Page 22

silver. I had acquired a
lot of pieces of silver. And when we had the first Cane Creek
fund-raising, I gave every piece of silver I owned to be auctioned off
to raise money. The - everytime there was something going on, I either
provided - depending on who was running the show, I always provided all
ingredients for the bread making, oftentimes paid for all the kitchen
ingredients for any of the craft fairs, always made the barbeque sauce
for the things. So, this was my contribution, maybe a couple of hundred
bucks every, everytime something was going on. We had our Christmas
sales; and I'd handle the bake sales; and I'd bake things and - it was
fun as well as having a cause. Great sense of community. I guess,
intellectually, I knew that the community could not continue the way it
was. I knew that. Because you're running out of land and the population
is increasing. My gut feeling was I felt threatened; our way of life was
threatened. And, you know, you never go through this introspective
period. And you never wake up every morning saying, "Gee this is a
wonderful place to live and I'm so glad I'm here." You don't do that at
all. It's just an acceptance of a level of comfort, a sense of self, a
sense of community, a sense of belonging. And all of it - and that's a
lot to be threatened. And the way it was handled, the complete disregard
for the people that lived here. Because we were small in number, the
assumption was that we had no value. And our perception of the way the
whole OWASA thing was handled, is that they had a meeting and decided
one day that this would be a nice place to put a lake. And then they
proceeded to do it. Without regard to the people; without regard to the
laws; without regard to the people of

Page 23

Chapel Hill.
Now it's cost the people of Chapel Hill millions of dollars. And for a
temporary solution to a long-term problem. Chapel Hill should have
become a part of this county-wide or, or counties - future planning for
the use of the natural resources. They should have looked at the
long-term needs of the area and made some type of sharing arrangement
instead of going off on a tangent. And in, in their tangent they have
split people in the community. They have created a monster that
threatens the livelihood of lots of people for a temporary solution. And
there was no validity to them coming here except that they decided there
wasn't enough folks out here to worry about.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

What do you know about the alternatives that they rejected?

NANCY HOLT:

They rejected the alternatives of the - using the Jordan as a water
source. And I thought it was awfully arrogant. They said that the people
of Chapel Hill were too good to drink the water out of there. Well they
should - the people in Bynum ought to come over here and smacked 'em.
Cause Bynum's been drinking it for damn years. The, the long-term
planning should be communities pulling together and sharing resourses of
a water supply. Not putting these random temporary water supplies in a
community and destroying it. Just look what the Jordon - how many
thousands of acres is available there. It's time for people to start,
the planners, to start thinking in long-term instead of short-term. Now
if this were - I think one of the reasons that everybody got so angry is
that they made it blatantly clear that this was only a short-term water
supply. They weren't even looking at it over the long haul at all. So
you disrupt twenty year - I mean two

Page 24

hundred years
of history, two hundred years of family farms for a temporary solution
to a problem that has long-term ramifications. And they have not - they
refused to look down the road at what their long-term needs were. And
because of the delays in court and all, and our fighting back - now the
Jordan is well able to supply the water to Chapel Hill. And I had heard
something one time that Chapel Hill says now, now you just set - to the
people at the Jordan - now you set aside so many million gallons of
water because we may want it. After this? And it, it just seems like
blatant disregard, for the people of Chapel Hill as well as the people
from Cane Creek.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

What about the University Lake alternative?

NANCY HOLT:

The thing that really ticked me off about that is that some man offered
to dredge it out, free, to get all the silt out. All he wanted was that
silt. He offered to dredge University Lake so it could accomodate more
water and therefore alleviate some of Chapel Hill's needs. Free. And he
was turned down flat.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

Why, why do you think he was?

NANCY HOLT:

Because this was their plan. One of the things I've learned in business,
and I've run across two other people like these folks - they don't hear
anything except the things that they want to hear. It's tunnel vision at
its finest. These are the people that you put in charge of projects.
Because they don't hear any adverse reasoning; they don't hear anything
else. If you went to a meeting with …

[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]

[TAPE 2, SIDE A]

[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]

FRANCES E. WEBB:

Someone suggested, I think it was a student in the class, that it was a,
it was a political thing on the part of the University.

NANCY HOLT:

Yeah, it was. You see the University had been told to get out of the
utilities business. But they never got out of it. They never stopped
being a powerful force. And whatever the University wanted, they got.
And don't ever forget that for a minute because they are the political
force to be reckoned with and they as a col… - in my mind, a collective
group of very, very powerful political figures. And whatever they want
they jolly well get. And so they have a temporary lake out here, the
beginnings of a temporary lake. Probably one of the things that
irritated me the most, was people selling real estate out here as lake
front property. Seven years ago. It was ads in the Chapel Hill papers,
about beautiful lake front property in the Cane Creek region. And I
thought, there's no lake there, how dare you? But we're - we just did
not have the powerful backing. I would suspect that had this community
contained the Ralph Scotts, or the William Fridays, Jim Martins, or the
Rose family - some of the other families that are very, very strong
politically, they would never have looked at this community. Never. But
we had no real strong political figures out here. We were just as
mediocre, middle-of-the-road, middle America as you can get. Not real,
real pro-active in anything, except generally taking

Page 26

care of the community and the land. And I think raising fine people
to populate this land. This is an excellent community in so far as the
kids grow up to be, maybe they don't grow up to be presidents, but they
don't grow up to be Charles Manson either. It's a community of middle
America. And I firmly believe that had we had some very, very political
family as residents here, OWASA would never have considered this or the
University. And I, I often use OWASA and the University interchangeably
because nothing really changed, when they became a separate department.
Nothing really changed, except it wasn't UNC Water Department
anymore.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

I think the Teers are the last farm that's sort of holding out.

NANCY HOLT:

Um-hum.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

They own land that will be flooded and haven't sold yet, so I
understand.

NANCY HOLT:

Right.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

What do you think's going to happen?

NANCY HOLT:

Well I'll tell you. The methodology of OWASA was deplorable. In order to
get the people to sell they used fear. And they went after the weakest
links first. They went after the widowers, the lady widows, the elderly.
And to me that is inexcusable. If you want a business arrangement and
you want to negotiate, you negotiate straight out. Don't play on the
fear of these people. All you have to do is to say to some elderly woman
"Well, the courts'll take it away from you." And immediately, to these
people, courts are the next thing to jail. And taking something away
from you. The first two people that sold land here were recent [widows],
[Gina McKiver and Pat Cates]. And it was the

Page 27

fear
factor. They did the same thing to Coy Armstrong; he was just rampant,
you know, he would not sell, this was his family home. And they worked
on the fear. And they told him, "Well if you don't want to sell, we'll
take you to court and the court will decide how much money you get. And
I can tell you it won't be as much money as you would get from here. So,
why don't you just go ahead and settle up now with us and then we can -
with this money you can be taken care of in your old age." So it's fear
again. And after you get the key people, and the key pieces of land, and
if you once start bringing your bulldozers in and you start knocking
these, these things down and clearing land, how many people have the
strong psychological resources to say "Up yours. Leave us alone. That's
all you're going to get. If you can put it there, on 400 acres, then you
go ahead and do it"? But they - it doesn't work that way. Because then
an older couple - now there's - the controlling people in this land and
the land acquisition here was always elderly people. Always. And they
know that they can accomplish this with fear. And they jolly well did it
with fear. Now had they come to people of my age group or the, the next
line people would have said "Up yours." But they didn't do that. The key
pieces of land - not all the key pieces but the majority of it - was
controlled by elderly people. And what are the fear factors and what are
the things that creates the most fear for the elderly? Losing their
home. Courts. Legal cost. Fear of being run off their land. Every one of
these things was being used. Or somebody - the courts condemning your
property and giving you a hundred dollars an acre. And your life is
gone? Your livelihood is gone? You can't deal

Page 28

with
that. There's no, there's no way that you can bypass, and overcome the
detrimental effects of what they did. To me, it is the lowest of the
low. To me, they used psychological warfare on these elderly people. And
to me it's inexcusable. And if I turn on UNC TV and I see William Friday
and he's talking about all the North Carolina people and how great it
is, I think "You asshole. Do you realize what was done in your
backyard?" And, and he interviews all of these elderly people and he
acts like he reveres these, these things. And these elderly people were
standing in his way. And William Friday is a political force to be
reckoned with. And he could have stopped some of this crap. They,
somebody could have jerked the chain of OWASA and stopped it. But it was
something, you know, that was going to be done regardless of who it
hurt, how it hurt, and the long term effects of this action. It was -
there was an immediate need and somebody told Everette Billingsley to go
do it and Everette is tunnel visioned all the way and there was nothing
else but that. Nothing. And so, if he knew that when he was in charge of
it that unless he died, it would be. Because he, he doesn't hear any
opposition, he doesn't hear any divergent opinions, all he sees and
hears is his goal.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

Do you thing the Teers are going to have to end up selling?

NANCY HOLT:

Well you see one of the things OWASA did was lie to everybody and
everybody's not stupid out here. They said "Now we will not tell you you
can't have dairy farms out here." Of course they won't tell you, the
EPA'll tell you. You can't have cow shit running into a water source.
You know, we're not stupid. But, some of the people

Page 29

believe this that, you know, that they, "they" meaning OWASA, said
that it wouldn't hurt the farms out here. Do you see all these rolling
hills? You can't have cows crapping on hills and the water running down
into a water, municipal water source. You can not. And so they have just
- said "We're not going to tell you you have to close down your dairy
operation." No they won't. EPA will do it for them. Absolutely can not
have it. So Teer's, which is - Teer's farm which has been in operation -
I mean the grandfather and the father and the, Lord knows. Mike Teer is
like my son. And I can see what it's done to them, the apprehension.
Because there's the grandfather. There was the uncle. There's Thomas.
And his son. And two daughters. And their families. That's their
livelihood. That's their life. That's their home. Now true, they're not
going to take their house, but when you take that big chunk of land away
from them and when you can't run cows because the streams run through
there, and the run-off from the fields. You tell me EPA is going to
allow this farm to continue. Just, you know, it's two divergent things.
It will not happen. And Thomas knows that. He knows that their life is
going to change and he knows these changes are coming. And I think it's
awfully sad. Terribly, terribly sad.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

But they've been fighting quite a while. And I imagine that's an economic
drain as well.

NANCY HOLT:

Well, Thomas and Evelyn have poured everything that they've got. I expect
they've depleted their capital reserves in order to help pay for these
attorneys. And, you'll have to verify this with Thomas but, I think he
had placed a bid on the land that OWASA was going to buy from

Page 30

the Stanfords. And CCB pulled a fast one on him.
They either accepted a bid after the bid period was closed - or
something. They did something. You'd have to verify that with them. But,
I think Thomas was considering taking Central Carolina Bank to court
too. Because once the bidding has been closed, you don't open it to
allow OWASA to come in and place a higher bid. But they did. So, it is a
political thing and it has political ramifications everywhere. And, and
the little community could, truly could not fight. We tried to go out. I
contacted fund raisers, national type fund raisers, and there wasn't a
whole lot that, that could be done. We were thinking about going to
people like John Deere and the big fertilizer companies and the, the big
tractor companies to see if they would not give us a grant to bring in
some real political powers. Or real fund-raising people. And to bring -
get some lobbyists in Washington. But we could not. Because we were not
a real tax-exempt organization, corporate structures are limited to what
they can do to nonentity entities like this. And we were just small
peanuts. We didn't have the resources to, to do it. But I think we did a
hell of a job for eight years. Eight years of fighting with very little
other than bake sales and community efforts and, and a dollar here and a
ten dollars there and a ten dollar a month pledge. I think we did a
phenomenal job. It brought the community together, made it more
cohesive. And gave us a sense of purpose. And for that I thank them. And
I'm sure that if the newcomers to the community would think about it,
they would realize how quickly they were assimilated into a community,
and became - quickly became a part of it. There was none of

Page 31

this, well you are a doctor, lawyer, or Indian chief. And I
am a farmer, a laborer, whatever. We were just a community. And it had
it some very, very positive effects. But there is a lot of anger and
resentment here. And, and how do you channel that anger and resentment?
Very, very hard, because there's so many forces to be resentful and
angry with. So it will be interesting to see how it all sifts down.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

Were there any people in the community that weren't really opposed to the
Reservoir?

NANCY HOLT:

Yeah. They were the ones that - some of the elderly widowers that sold
out first - said "You can't fight 'em. Can't fight 'em." Of course the
Stanfords, which were the ones that brought them in here in the first
place, there's a lot of animousity toward them. And they tried to
straddle the fence after it became a, a reality. From what I've heard,
and I can't prove this, that Joyce Stanford, [Bill] Stanford's wife,
went to OWASA. Their dairy farm was having some problems. Went to OWASA
and said this would be a perfect place for a dam. Now this is hearsay. I
can't prove it. Then, that gave them, you know - it kind of focused them
on the community. And then after OWASA started looking out here, they
acted like they didn't want them here. But their farm was in trouble.
And they made out like damn bandits. They sold out to them. Nobody will
tell you exactly what it was but I've heard estimates up to four
million. So they truly bailed themselves out of a difficult situation.
But they rather became piranhas. You never hear of Bill and Joyce
Stanford being invited to any of the community affairs. If there's a pig
picking in the community, you never see Bill and Joyce

Page 32

there. Now it may be that they have other - another social
set. I don't know. But you never see them anywhere. They still go to
church here. But they were pretty much ostracized. After they sold. And
there was some distrust there from the very, very beginning toward them.
That's how I heard the rumors about them going to OWASA and saying
they've got a perfect spot for them.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

I have one thing I'm interested in, that I didn't get to right in the
early part if, if you sort of think we're finished with the Cane Creek
for a minute. I was, I heard your grandfather was a root doctor.

NANCY HOLT:

Well, it's awfully hard to know whether you could classify him as that or
what you could do. You see when we were growing up, all twelve kids, we
never used any commercial medicines, except for some kind of horse
liniment. Every cough syrup, everything was handled through herbs and,
and things. And, it came from my mother. And you see I never knew my
grandfather so I never knew the connection. And whether he was a root
doctor or not. And in the mountains you never think of anybody being a
root doctor; everybody does it. So it's all part of that culture that we
brought down here. And I still use these home remedies with my children
and with all the other kids.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

Could you tell me about some of them?

NANCY HOLT:

Some of them are real neat. If you have a bad cold, or chest cold, and
this truly works. You take - now we used camphor and lard and something
else, sometimes a drop or two of kerosene. And you rubbed it on your
chest, covered it with flannel and then you got to drink the good stuff
which was white lightening, honey and if you had any lemon juice, if

Page 33

not lemon juice, vinegar. And you made a hot toddy
out of that. And you drank that, covered up with all these blankets. And
you had to have flannel on the, the your back and your chest. And the
next morning you'd be amazed at how much better you were. Cough syrups
made out of cherry bark. And for diarrhea, the, a tea made from the red
oak bark. For nervousness or, you know, you're just all out of whack,
you would get nettles and make a nettle tea. For a sprain or a bruise
you would get mullein leaves and put it on there and that truly
works.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

How do you use the mullein leaves?

NANCY HOLT:

You just put it, put it on there and then you put a hot compress on top
of it. Another thing that I've used with Michael and Brian with great
success for puncture wounds - you scrap an Irish potato and put a
poultice on there and it prevents the wound from closing, so it prevents
tetnus. And I used that maybe five years ago. Mike or Brian had stepped
on a rusty nail down in the cow pasture and wanted to go to the tractor
pull that night and didn't tell anybody until eleven o'clock.

BRIAN HOLT:

That was Mike, not me.

NANCY HOLT:

All right. That was Mike. And his foot was swollen up and he had red
streaks going up his leg. We took him to the doctor and they washed it
off and of course the wound had closed over. They started him on
antibiotics and I brought him home and scrapped a Irish potato and put
it on there. And such gunky stuff you've never seen in your life came
out of there. The swelling went down and I know, being a nurse, that it
was not the antibiotics working that fast.

Page 34

BRIAN HOLT:

I stepped on a nail about, about a inch and a half in my heel.

NANCY HOLT:

And your dad used a Irish potato? [Nancy addresses Brian, who nods yes.]
Yeah. So we still use lots of these folklorish things. Michael had a, a
virus that - he had strep throat and then the antibiotics with the strep
throat and some kind of virus called - caused lesions on the gum and the
tongue and he couldn't swallow and it was all back in his throat and he
couldn't even - he was salivating and he would just have to let the
saliva run out of his mouth because he couldn't swallow. And using
yellowroot, it was better. He hadn't eaten anything for a week. He'd
laid down at the - this was graduation and he went to the beach - and he
laid down there for seven days, just sick as he could be, with strep
throat and all sorts of stuff. And he, he'd lost so much weight and he
just could not swallow, his throat was so sore with all the mouth
lesions. And we got yellowroot and pounded the root and put it on these
things. In a matter of hours he was eating. In twenty-four hours it was
completely gone.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

I don't know what yellowroot is.

NANCY HOLT:

Well it's found along the creeks and the roots are really bright yellow.
And that's the name of the plant. So, we use lots of - we never give it
a whole lot of thought, it's just a way of life. We just do this. I
don't think I ever went to a doctor but once when I was a kid and that
was when I split my head open. And Mama couldn't fix it. But everything
else was handled by home remedies. Never - oh, for a stomach ache you
would take cornmeal and toast it in a frying pan. And, put it

Page 35

in a bag and lay it on your stomach. And that
worked. Who knows why, but it worked. And lots of these things, you
never give it a thought as to why it works. And, it just does. Some of
it is Cherokee because my family is part Cherokee, part Scotch and
Irish. Some of the things are old Indian lore, some of it's Scotch, some
of it's Irish. And it's just like a pot-pourri of everything and you
never know which is which. So anytime I see some - read something and it
talks about an old Indian cure, I think, we used that, that must have
been the Indian side. [Laughter]

FRANCES E. WEBB:

Do you think your sons are going to learn how to do it?

NANCY HOLT:

Well, they're already believers. They know for a fact that putting the
stuff on your chest and drinking that hot toddy works. The potato works.
So, I feel sure that they will carry that on. Our traditions, holiday
traditions will be the same thing because it has a real positive impact.
The nursery rhymes I used to sing to them as kids, I've seen sing to
other little children. So they will remember these things.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

What kind of holiday traditions do you have?

NANCY HOLT:

Mostly traditional kinds of things. The family all getting together and
exchanging gifts. Easter egg hunts, going fishing on Easter Monday.

FRANCES E. WEBB:

I didn't know that.

NANCY HOLT:

For New Year's Day, everybody getting together and eating the black-eyed
peas and the turnip greens together for health and prosperity for the
coming year. We had one tradition; we had Christmas bags. That Christmas
bag was everybody in the family and even our

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extended family - and there's fifty-two immediate family members - got a
bag of goodies for Christmas. And in that bag it was usually an orange,
an apple, a couple pieces of candy, a couple of English walnuts or
pecans, a little box of raisins, some little candy kinds of things. But
even though those things are available, it was special; it belonged to
you; it had your name on that bag. And several of the other people in
the community, my mother being a generous, gregarious kind of person,
would, would keep drawing people in. And after she died, we continued it
periodically, but it just wasn't, didn't seem right. Until my younger
sister started it again last year with the help of her two daughters.
And that's become a big thing to them, fixing the Christmas bags for
everybody. And when you fix fifty-two bags, that's, that's a chunk. We
started our own traditions here in the community. Every year at
Christmas time we invite for Christmas breakfast. We have all the - we
started out with just the elderly people for Christmas breakfast because
I thought, these people probably don't have young people, and at that
time Michael and Brian were small. And there was twelve, I think twelve,
really elderly people and now there's only two left. So we've extended
it to the community. [Phone
ringing] And on Christmas morning, we have from fifty to a
hundred people in and out of here eating breakfast, eating brunch. And
it lasts until about one o'clock.